95 – Night

Grade: C-

Summary

Tom and Harry are on the Holodeck, messing around as Captain Proton and his sidekick. Suddenly, the Holodeck malfunctions because of a power drain (or something). Voyager has entered an area of space which contains no stars. This void is 2500 LY long, so it will take the ship at least 2 years to reach the nearest star on the other side. The ship has already been in the void for several weeks, and everyone is on edge and getting restless. Even Captain Janeway has been feeling sorry for herself and staying in her room for days on end.

Commentary

Wow. We’ve waited five months for the season 5 premiere. My goodness. They should have left this stinker on the cutting room floor. I don’t know why anyone would think this was a good episode to start off another season.

The first 30 minutes or so of this episode seemed to take forever. Nothing at all happens in this episode except we start seeing characters going nuts because they don’t see anything when they look out the window. Then suddenly there are aliens on the ship, and there’s another alien that comes to the ship’s rescue, and then there’s talk of a Vortex and some kind of waste or something. Actually, it’s not at all interesting, and once the other alien shows up, we have a standard Star Trek twist. If you’ve seen any episode of Star Trek at all, you know how this thing is going to end.

The worst thing is that this episode is just dreadfully tedious. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

Of Note

Tuvok gives the greatest Vulcan pun I have ever heard in my life. Seven finds him in the Astrometrics lab, looking at photos of actual stars. He says it’s because the view from his room is “less than stellar.” Uh, yeah, no kidding. There are no stars out the window. Hee hee.

At one point, Kim suggests turning Cargo Bay 2 into an additional Holodeck. The funny thing is that’s where everything else goes too – not the least of which is Seven’s regeneration alcove.